What Should We Do?

Acts 2:42–47

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

⁴³ Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵ they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

The Word of the Lord,

Thanks be to God.

"What should we do?"

That's the question Peter's audience asks in Acts 2:37. They've just heard the Pentecost sermon. They've just watched the Spirit blow through the room and rearrange everything they thought they knew. And their response is not a creed or a committee — it's a question. "What should we do?"

Peter says: change your mind. Repent. Be baptized. And then Luke does something remarkable. He doesn't give us a program. He paints a picture. Verses 42 through 47 are a theological portrait — a summary, not a transcript — of what the Spirit produces when a community devotes itself to a new shared life.

And the word "devoted" matters. The Greek is proskarterountes — persistence, intentionality, habitual practice. Not a one-time enthusiasm. The same verb shows up in chapter 1, verse 14, describing the prayer gathering before Pentecost even happened. These people practiced before they understood. They showed up before they had a plan.

Four practices: the apostles' teaching, koinōnia — which is not "fellowship" in the coffee-hour sense, but shared life with economic and relational and spiritual weight — the breaking of bread, and the prayers. And then Luke tells us what flowed from those practices: they kept selling, they kept distributing, as anyone had need. Those verbs are imperfect tense. Ongoing. Responsive. Not a one-time liquidation or an imposed system.

And then, verse 47: "The Lord added to their number daily." Not the community's outreach strategy. God is the subject of that sentence. The community practiced. The Spirit produced.

Now, here's the thing. These were people who didn't previously belong to each other. Go back a few verses — Pentecost itself — and you've got people from different places, different languages, different histories. What drew them together wasn't shared background. It was a shared encounter with the Spirit and a shared question: "What should we do?"

I suspect that question sounds familiar to some of you today.

"What should we do?" is the question of every community in transition. It's the question three presbyteries ask when they sit across conference tables from each other and try to imagine a common future. And the temptation — I know this temptation well — is to answer it with a strategic plan, an org chart, a timeline. Peter answered it differently. Change your mind. Commit yourself to something new. The practices come next, not the plan.

There's a difference between organizing a community and forming one. Organization gives you structure. Formation gives you identity. Both matter. But Luke is interested in formation — what happens when people who didn't previously share a life devote themselves to shared practices until those practices shape who they are together.

And I want to name something honestly, because I think it lives in this room whether we say it out loud or not: grief and anxiety live in the background of any "becoming." Three presbyteries each have histories, cultures, ways of doing things. Becoming one body means some of that will change. That's real. Luke doesn't pretend it's easy. His immediate follow-up to this beautiful portrait? Conflict. Every single one of his community summaries in Acts is followed by conflict. He's not naive. He's not nostalgic. He's showing us what the Spirit makes possible, which the community then struggles to embody in real time.

Both things are true at the same time: the beauty of the vision and the difficulty of living into it. Luke holds them together. And I think we can, too.

So let me bring in the Six Great Ends of the Church. Because they belong in this conversation.

The Great Ends are our constitutional answer to the question "What should we do — together, as the church?" And they map onto this passage with striking naturalness. Listen:

The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind — "The Lord added to their number." The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God — "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship." The maintenance of divine worship — "The breaking of bread and the prayers; they spent much time together in the temple." The preservation of the truth — "The apostles' teaching," held and discerned in community. The promotion of social righteousness — "They would sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds, as any had need." The exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world — the whole scene. The community as sign. Not a finished product, but a lived anticipation of God's reign breaking into ordinary life.

Here's the deal. The temptation — and I think we all feel it — is to treat the Great Ends as a rubric. A scorecard. A mission statement to be operationalized. Check the box: Are we promoting social righteousness? Check: Are we maintaining divine worship? That turns the Ends into outcomes we have to produce. And that's not what Luke shows us.

Luke shows us outputs, not outcomes. Practices, not products. When a community devotes itself — with persistence and intentionality — to the practices God has given it, the Spirit forms that community into something it could not have planned or produced on its own. "The Lord added to their number." God is the subject.

The Six Great Ends are not the destination. They are the discipline of the road. They are not a checklist that proves you're a real presbytery. They are formative practices — signs on the wall of the house you're building together — that remind you who you are becoming. Not who you have to prove you already are.

Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei. The church reformed and always being reformed according to the word of God. A new presbytery is not a finished thing. It is a community under formation. And that's not a problem to be solved. That's what the Spirit does.

I want to leave you with an image.

Deuteronomy 6 tells the people of God: take these words to heart. Talk about them all the time. Write them on your doorposts and your gates. Put them up where you can see them. The earliest Christians were basically told: love God, love others, and don't let yourself or anyone else forget.

A few years ago, when our kids were going through a season of speaking unkindly to each other — as kids do — my wife and I put up signs around the house. "We speak gently and respectfully." And every time the volume went up or the words got sharp, we didn't deliver a lecture. We just pointed at the sign. Over and over. Until the household got the message. Not because the sign had magic powers. But because it reminded us who we were trying to become.

Three presbyteries becoming one household are going to need signs on the wall. Not a strategic plan — though that will come. Not an org chart — though that matters. But a shared set of reminders about who you are becoming together. The Six Great Ends are those signs.

When the budget conversation gets tense — point at the sign. When old turf instincts surface — point at the sign. When someone wonders why we're doing this at all — point at the sign. The new Christians weren't perfect. Peter and the apostles had to keep pointing. And then — because they devoted themselves, because they practiced — no one was in need.

And here's the last thing Luke tells us: "They had the goodwill of all the people." Their internal life was externally legible. People on the outside could see what was happening on the inside. The best witness a new presbytery can offer Oklahoma isn't a press release about union. It's a common life so marked by devotion, generosity, and worship that people on the outside can see something real.

You don't have to manufacture the outcome. Devote yourselves to the practices. Point at the signs. The Spirit does the rest.

So may we be the people who devote ourselves — with persistence and intentionality — to the practices God has given us. May we be the people who point at the signs and trust the Spirit to form us into something we could not have planned on our own. And may this new household, built on the apostles' teaching and koinōnia and the breaking of bread and the prayers, become a place where no one is in need and the goodwill of all the people bears witness to the God who keeps adding to our number.

Amen. Thanks be to God.